Word: tb
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Next to Koch. The biggest news last week came from Buffalo, where three tuberculosis societies held a joint convention.* Bacteriologist Rene Jules Dubos of the Rockefeller Institute had at last discovered a method of cultivating TB bacteria, simply and quickly, in test tubes. The basis of Dubos' method is a synthetic detergent made by Atlas Powder Co. (which calls it "Tween 80") for use in cosmetics. Doctors hailed the discovery as the greatest contribution to TB research since Robert Koch first isolated the germ itself...
Researchers, who have fumbled and bumbled for lack of an effective technique, can now "do an experiment a day instead of two a year," according to Dr. Dubos. They can also diagnose new TB cases, where X rays are useless, in a few days instead of two months. Previous methods of cultivating the bacteria were not only slow but they usually modified the organism so as to make the experiments inconclusive...
...responsible for this notable advance is a 45-year-old, twinkling professor with a scientific slouch, a strong French accent and gestures. He came to the U.S. in 1924, at Rutgers completed the training he began in Paris. The TB culture may or may not be his greatest achievement: his discovery (in 1937) of gramicidin, first of the germ-killing mold extracts, led to the development of penicillin. His latest find, he hopes, will lure young doctors into TB research, hitherto shunned because "the chances of finding something have been practically...
Promising Drug. Dr. Horton Corwin Hinshaw of the Mayo Foundation also had some news for the Buffalo meeting. Tests on 65 patients had proved that streptomycin definitely arrests TB. It looks like "the first clinically feasible" drug for use in TB, said Dr. Hinshaw...
Streptomycin is slightly toxic (but no more so than the sulfa drugs, which do not halt TB) and makes patients rather dizzy. Though it suppresses the disease, it does not actually kill the germs. Patients who are taken off the drug do not continue to improve, sometimes relapse...